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A BALSOME FOR BOTH THE HEMISPHERES: TEARS AS MEDICINE IN HERBERT’S TEMPLE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PREACHING

CHENOVICK, CLARISSA

ELH, 2017-10, Vol.84 (3), p.559-590 [Periódico revisado por pares]

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

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  • Título:
    A BALSOME FOR BOTH THE HEMISPHERES: TEARS AS MEDICINE IN HERBERT’S TEMPLE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PREACHING
  • Autor: CHENOVICK, CLARISSA
  • Assuntos: 17th century ; Attitudes ; Baroque era ; British & Irish literature ; Catholicism ; Christianity ; Context ; Early Modern English ; English literature ; Exegesis & hermeneutics ; Fate ; Herbert, George (1593-1633) ; Literary criticism ; Literary devices ; Medicine ; Metaphor ; Narrative techniques ; Poetry ; Prayer ; Protestantism ; Spirituality ; Theme ; Welsh literature
  • É parte de: ELH, 2017-10, Vol.84 (3), p.559-590
  • Descrição: George Herbert, according to the critical consensus, was no weeping penitent. Although repentant tears, sighs, and groans feature prominently in some 20-odd poems in The Temple, Herbert scholars have tended to agree that the poetic speaker who identifies himself to God as “thy clay that weeps, thy dust that calls” only uses tears ironically or metaphorically, in direct contrast to the self-indulgent lachrymose excesses of his Counter-Reformation contemporaries. But, as recent research has revealed, the tears of repentance were far from empty or metaphorical for early modern English Protestants. Numerous sermons and popular guides to prayer exhort the godly to make tears a constant part of their prayers, and the faithful seem to have complied with enthusiasm. In light of the demonstrably weepy tenor of seventeenth-century English Protestants’ repentance, a reappraisal of Herbert’s poetic tears seems overdue. Whereas previous scholarship has been anxious to establish Herbert’s independence from the so-called Counter-Reformation poetry of tears, thereby overlooking many of the complexities of seventeenth-century English penitential doctrines and practices, this article instead places these poems in the context of seventeenth-century English Protestant sermons on repentance. Because Herbert was himself immersed in seventeenth-century preaching culture, these sermons offer valuable context for the parson-poet’s attitude toward the value of penitential tears. But they also highlight a key theme that structures the penitential poems of The Temple : the characterization of penitential tears as a type of medicine.
  • Editor: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Idioma: Inglês
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